1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a method and system used to determine the services available to a flight of a craft and in particular an aircraft. In particular, the present invention may use computer systems to generate a model of a flight which has been executed, or a hypothetical flight to assist in the calculation of charges to be made to the operator of the aircraft by one or more aviation service providers. Further, the present invention may model the activity of an aircraft from embarkation through to termination of a flight, with such a flight potentially spanning the territories of a number of different aviation service providers.
2. Background Art
Aircraft operators and airlines employ the services of a large number of aviation service providers to transport passengers and cargo. Many different services can be rendered in relation to an aircraft from a number of different service providers. The departure and/or arrival airports can charge for passenger processing, boarding bridge usage, aircraft parking and housing, security charges and also for the use of various airport facilities such as catering, fuel pumping and baggage handling. In addition to airports, air navigation and traffic management service providers may charge an aircraft operator for approach control, departure control, aerodrome control, area control, oceanic area control, metrological data provision, search and rescue services, flight monitoring and pre-flight approval services for example.
Therefore over the course of a flight, numerous costs can be incurred by the aircraft operator with many different aviation service providers. Air navigation and traffic management services will be provided at take off, during transit of a flight and subsequently at landing. Depending on the distance traveled and route taken by an aircraft it is also possible for the responsibility for air traffic management and navigation services to be transferred between multiple service providers working in different geographical regions. The area or region in which a single air traffic management service provider operates may be described as a flight information region (FIR), being a region where air traffic management data is captured and monitored in relation to aircraft activity. Only a single traffic management service provider may operate in each FIR, and passes responsibility for a flight to a different service provider once an aircraft leaves each FIR.
As can be appreciated it is important for aviation service providers to accurately track the services they provide to each individual aircraft and associated flights. It is also important for airlines to monitor the services provided to their aircraft to ensure they are being charged correctly. Currently it is difficult to achieve this aim as scheduled flights may often experience diversions due to weather conditions, emergencies or may be significantly delayed. This provides variances between scheduled flights and the actual flights which have been executed. Furthermore, outside of passenger transport, the scheduling of flights is less rigorously adhered to.
In the calculation of service charges it is also important to ensure that services charged for were actually utilized in relation to a particular flight. Again, a check must be made as to whether an available service which was scheduled to be used was actually used by an aircraft to ensure that the aircraft operator is actually billed for services rendered.
The charging of aircraft operators is generally completed through an investigation of scheduled flights and correlating these with air traffic control tower strip records. Tower strip records can provide information relating to the recorded movements of aircraft and the identities of these aircraft.
This process generally consists of a manual operation completed by each airport to confirm that a scheduled or planned flight did actually take place and depart or arrive at the airport involved. Similar manual processes are also required to confirm which of the available services offered by an airport were actually used by a particular aircraft. The manual nature of these processes inevitably means that some aircraft operators are billed for services which were not rendered, and other aircraft operators are not billed for services rendered. This manual checking process must also be completed at each and every airport involved in the flight.
Some flights, e.g. international, may pass through many different regions and/or stop over at intermediate airports. Each FIR may have different services available which may be chargeable at different rates and thus airline operators are often faced with receiving many invoices from many different service providers that may not be easily attributable to a particular flight.
Furthermore, a service provider, such as an airport's air traffic control, may process hundreds of flights arriving or departing each day and thus it can prove difficult to monitor the time spent processing each flight and determine an appropriate amount to charge. Charges may be determined based on aircraft-type, passenger numbers or similar easily discernable parameters. However, some flights may require extra ground services or more time to process on arrival/departure or movement within the airport. Thus it would be advantageous to provide a system for monitoring all services provided to a flight to accurately distribute service charges.
One attempt to address this issue (for airports in particular) is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,812,890 by Smith and Bradley. Smith and Bradley describe an airport focused landing detection and identification system configured to automatically invoice aircraft operators. The system disclosed employs one basic source of air traffic management data to detect whether an aircraft has landed. Through monitoring radio traffic (and in particular voice traffic) associated with the landing flight an identification can be made as to whether the aircraft operator is to be automatically charged for airport landing fees.
Smith and Bradley describe a relatively simple automatic charging system which employs a single data source to detect landing events for a single service provider. Although the system disclosed does make some attempt to address the problems of airports with tracking charges, this system cannot be used by air navigation and traffic management service providers to in turn bill for their own services. The system does not monitor the air space usage of an aircraft nor allow for any sophisticated charging schemes or models to be employed by service providers. Furthermore, the Smith and Bradley system does not describe any way to determine all services provided to an aircraft flight either at an airport or en-route between airports.
All references, including any patents or patent applications cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference. No admission is made that any reference constitutes prior art. The discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinence of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to herein, this reference does not constitute an admission that any of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the art, in New Zealand or in any other country.
It is acknowledged that the term ‘comprise’ may, under varying jurisdictions, be attributed with either an exclusive or an inclusive meaning. For the purpose of this specification, and unless otherwise noted, the term ‘comprise’ shall have an inclusive meaning—i.e. that it will be taken to mean an inclusion of not only the listed components it directly references, but also other non-specified components or elements. This rationale will also be used when the term ‘comprised’ or ‘comprising’ is used in relation to one or more steps in a method or process.